He got shot down. That's it. He drove a bomber. Courage? Yeah. But weigh his courage on the same scale with any ground-pounder infantry or Marine in Vietnam who spent their entire year's tour "up country" closing with the enemy one-on-one with automatic rifles, rockets (Our puny and ineffective "LAWs" against the best hand-carried rocket in the world, the RPG-7, our 'Matty Mattel' M-16 pea-shooters against the awesome murder-machine, the AK-47) and suddenly John McCain's "heroics" in the sky don't really measure up.

The "grunt" slept at night under a poncho with the bugs, the rain and the filthy jungle leaches, almost every night of his tour. He ate C-rations out of cans left over from the Korean War.

Compare that with flyboy "hero" John McCain. He dumped his ordinance over the target and headed back to his carrier in time for a nice hot lunch and a nap between cotton sheets. He changed into clean clothes every day. The grunt: sometimes up to a month in the same filthy BDUs.

Compare treatment at the hands of the enemy: A captured airman was a prize to the North Vietnamese. Yes, they beat the crap out of John McCain. Why not? He bombed their homes. But John McCain was spared his life because of his rank.

Do you know what would happen to a ground-pounder captured by the NVA or the VC? A grunt was of no value to the enemy. It would be logistically impractical to haul them all the way back to North Vietnam, so they would have as much "fun" with their captive as they could, such as cutting off his genitals and stuffing them down his throat. Then they would leave his mutilated body hanging in a tree by his thumbs as a "present" to the next platoon of G.I.s to find.

Rank truly does, "have its privilege," as the saying goes.

The word "hero" in American culture has been debased and has little relation to the true and original meaning. John McCain wraps himself in the American flag. He doesn't mind standing on the bodies of so many real heroes, and trades his laurel wreath for political points.

"Hero-ISM" is McCain's meat and it is fast becoming rancid.

At least I got you to come out of the closet and use your screen name for a change.

You do not have access to the daily ratings. You pulled these figures out of your ass. Nice try.

Blowhard Bill O'Loofah, who, you may remember, once tried to say he knew what war was like because, "I was in combat." But when challenged quickly walked it back down by saying that he was in fact in some Latin American country and there was a disturbance down the street from his hotel and shots were fired, possibly in the direction of his hotel. Therefore, he surmised, "I was in combat, I know what it's like."

But our 6'4" would-be combat veteran Bill O'Loofah was apparently too scared to come out of his Fox studio bunker today to meet with a group of real combat vets from the Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq Wars to see if he could explain his on-air comments of a few weeks ago that there are not any homeless veterans sleeping outdoors in America.

They didn't want to beat him up, just enlighten Bill O' to the facts about homeless veterans.

They made a mistake coming to the Fox studios to try to reason with O'Dildo. They confused him with someone who could actually give a shit about them.

Thanks to Keith Olbermann for pointing this out tonight on Countdown.

Chairman Mao and Vladimir Lenin are dead. Castro is too old. Maybe Amy Goodman. Nah, she wears lipstick sometimes.

"It's a tough war we're in. It's not going to be over right away. There's going to be other wars."

"I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars."

This man is nothing short of a fucking lunatic. I know he doesn't even mean half the stuff he says. He just gets wound up in front of a crowd, especially octogenarian veterans rattling their walkers and turning their hearing aids way up, and suddenly he can't stop himself. They are cheering, he's the big hero, and now he thinks he is charging up San Juan Hill, or storming the beach at Iwo Jima.

"We'll NEVER surrender!! Never!

There there Johnny Boy, Settle down. Come along now it's almost time for your afternoon nap old boy. And we'll wake you up in time to watch Ollie North's "War Stories," I promise. Yes, and I'll even make you a nice glass of warm milk with Metamucil, just like you like it.